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Medical mobile apps to play larger role in patients health if doctors let them

on
December 05, 2011
Source: MedCityNews.com

Dr. Eric Topol, vice chairman of West Wireless Health Institute who also works at the Scripps Research Institute, kicked off the mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C. with an energetic and interactive discussion of the future of mobile healthcare (he gave himself an ECG on stage with an iPhone app and hotel lotion). His message: innovation is coming in the form of mobile apps and “adds,” the extensions that turn mobile devices into microscopes and other new innovative medical devices.

But he also used the event to release his new book, “The Creative Destruction of Medicine,” (e-book only until January) which describes healthcare at a critical moment in history in which the medical profession will cede control to patients and, in many cases, mobile innovators that aren’t coming from the medical profession.

“Instead of doctor-knows-best and this paternalistic type of thing – that is on the way out,” Topol said in an interview after his speech Monday in Washington, D.C. “Doctors have to acknowledge that.”

“Still we have this stuck medical establishment – and I am part of that – which is unwilling to democratize medicine. And that can’t go on any further,” he said.

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